In an email to the Bowdoin community yesterday, President Safa Zaki announced the formation of an ad-hoc committee focused on potential changes to the College’s investment strategies and communications about investments. The eight-member committee consists of Bowdoin faculty, staff, students and trustees.

This announcement follows the Board of Trustees’s consideration this summer of the requests in the “Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum,” launched by Bowdoin Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and passed in May by a student body vote, according to Zaki’s email.

“We listened and told the students that we would consider these matters in greater detail over the summer. Since then, the board has continued our conversations about these issues,” Zaki wrote. “The board is committed to broadening engagement with the community on this topic.”

The committee will not make recommendations specifically regarding the referendum, but it will propose general guidelines for how the College should navigate questions around potential changes to its investment practices.

“Of course, the committee will be having these conversations in the context of this referendum,” Zaki wrote. “But rather than asking them to render a position on a particular issue, I have invited the committee to focus on developing a set of considerations and principles that we can turn to when analyzing questions that emerge at the intersection of the College’s mission and its investment practices.”

Zaki added that the committee will engage and consult with other members of the community, as well as look to past precedent in this area.

“The committee will consider whether these past practices remain applicable or if new conditions and circumstances require different approaches,” Zaki wrote.

Following Zaki’s email, SJP held a general meeting on the museum steps to discuss next steps.

“We just held a meeting to check in with the SJP community, and we are still working on formulating a response based on the will of the collective,” SJP leaders wrote in a message to the Orient.

Zaki wrote that she anticipates the committee will finish its work and make recommendations by the end of the semester unless the members decide more time is needed.